Finch’s elegant 12th historical mystery featuring British detective Charles Lenox (after An Extravagant Death) finds the investigator probing a cold case in 1879 London. While recovering from injuries sustained during a previous case in America, Charles receives a letter from his former housekeeper, Mrs. Huggins, claiming that someone has been attempting to break into her house. She’s particularly frightened because, seven years earlier, the house’s former tenant died under suspicious circumstances that have never been explained. Charles digs into the details of that case and learns it involved an apothecary who distributed a variety of opium-derived medicines. Meanwhile, the young daughter of Charles’s recently deceased cousin arrives from India, and he helps her and her Indian friend, Sari, adjust to life in London. Finch offers a delightful mélange of crisscrossing subplots rooted in contemporaneous issues including colonialism, women’s suffrage, and poverty, and ensures that each thread enhances rather than distracts from the main mystery. Charles, meanwhile, remains a winning protagonist: intelligent and kind but never dull. This long-running series still has gas in the tank. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 08/29/2025 | Details & Permalink

This disappointing series launch from Hodder (The Burton & Swinburne series) and sci-fi novelist Moorcock (The Woods of Arcady) doesn’t make the case for a sequel. Sir Seaton Begg and Doctor Taffy Sinclair both work for the British Temporal Service, travelling through time to maintain stability in the present. At the outset, they’re assigned to visit 1930s Istanbul, which has been plagued by a master assassin known as the Red King. They arrive just in time to save an old frenemy, Violet Damm, from one of the Red King’s minions. Violet informs her rescuers that her boss, Sir Vivian Clarke, head of the Secret Service’s Turkish Bureau, is backing the Red King. Begg and Sinclair are puzzled, since they, too, are working for Clarke; they investigate Violet’s claims after Clarke commissions them to look into one of his agents whom he suspects of going rogue. The story’s hokey plotting is reflected in its pulpy prose (“I don’t know why, but I feel as if, where this case is concerned, the fate of worlds is at stake!”). Readers will lose interest long before the climax arrives. Agent: Howard Morhaim, Howard Morhaim Literary. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 08/29/2025 | Details & Permalink

Murphy’s diverting latest (after Enchanted Hill) finds Grace Covington getting a taste of the good life while attending the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair with her wealthy cousins Oliver and Lillie Carter. Oliver is in love with Harriet Forbes, an actress his mother deems below their station. After Harriet is murdered at the fair, Oliver is thrown in jail, and Grace must team up with Lillie to prove his innocence by finding the killer among half a dozen suspects. Meanwhile, Grace is both drawn to and repelled by the rich, standoffish Theodore Parker. The scenes at the fair, full of attractions including ferris wheels and premature babies in incubators, are well researched, and the mystery manages to surprise at every turn. However, despite numerous threats to her life, Grace remains laughably foolhardy, and her constant volleying between desperately working to save Oliver and joyfully visiting the fair’s exhibitions results in significant tonal whiplash. Still, Murphy sticks the landing with a satisfying conclusion that’s feel-good without tipping into treacle. Historical whodunit fans will be pleased. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 08/29/2025 | Details & Permalink

In this immersive if overstuffed thriller from Bondurant (Oleander City), Air Force pilot Tom Kaiser returns home to the Canadian border town of North Chazy, N.Y., where he’s haunted by his sister’s tragic drowning. Shortly after arriving, Tom is drawn into the orbit of Donnie LeClair, a charming but ruthless slumlord and art dealer, through whom he gets work collecting debts for a Montreal drug lord. In his personal life, he begins confronting old wounds in his relationships with his mother, brother, and high school girlfriend, who’s now a beleaguered social worker. Meanwhile, Donnie launches a dangerous forgery scheme that attracts violent rivals from both sides of the border. As winter deepens and the ice on Lake Champlain thickens, Donnie’s plans unravel, and Tom is confronted by a supernatural presence that has haunted him since childhood. Between Tom’s guilt about his dead sister, Donnie’s criminal schemes, and numerous other subplots, Bondurant struggles to maintain forward momentum. Still, multilayered characterizations and evocative prose enrich the proceedings. For literary thriller fans, it’s worth a look. Agent: Alex Glass, Glass Literary. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 08/29/2025 | Details & Permalink

Krenik’s promising debut nimbly melds fantasy and mystery for a satisfying whodunit set in 2226. Courtney Drake has spent two years distraught over the disappearance of her husband, Keith, who vanished while coordinating assistance to hurricane victims in the Tropics. She’s stunned when a letter arrives informing her that Keith was arrested for spreading lies about PAX, a group of anti-democratic elites who masked their desire for power as an earnest attempt to improve living conditions for working people worldwide. Strapped for money, Courtney agrees to tutor the five-year-old twins of Lord Robert Ranfurly, a widower who has been secretly working with anti-PAX group CAPE, to which Courtney’s son, Nick, also belongs. The job becomes more complicated when Lord Ranfurly’s gardener is killed, possibly by PAX members or sympathizers, and Courtney teams up with Lord Ranfurly to solve the murder, hoping the investigation might lead her to Keith. Krenik toggles between Courtney’s and Ranfurly’s perspectives, which helps flesh out a future filled with dragons and nefarious government conspiracies. With satisfying reveals and tantalizing sparks between the protagonists, this will leave readers eager for the sequel. (Self-published)

Reviewed on 08/29/2025 | Details & Permalink

Goldberg (the Gangsterland series) riffs on a familiar setup in this twisty and inventive crime thriller. Unscrupulous Oregon cop Jack Biddle is indebted to criminals for hundreds of thousands of dollars. While hiding out in a remote mountain town, he spots a van and decides to shake down the passengers for the money he needs. Before he can get to the vehicle, however, it skids on black ice and crashes into a ravine. When Jack reaches the scene, he finds the decapitated body of the driver, Robert Green, and millions of dollars in valuables including diamonds and cash. Jack is unaware that Robert was desperate to pay off his own debts, and looted 324 safety deposit boxes from the law firm where he worked to finance a new life in South America for himself and his criminal sister, Penny. Robert’s disappearance alarms Penny, who finds out that Jack has the loot—but both of them have bigger problems when a dangerous third party comes after the stash. With comic flair, shocking violence, and a capacity for surprise, this recalls the noir-tinged films of the Coen brothers. Goldberg’s fans will be thrilled. Agent: Jennie Dunham, Dunham Literary. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 08/29/2025 | Details & Permalink

Mistake-prone amateur spy Gabriel Dax romps through two minor international crises of the early 1960s in Boyd’s shrewd latest espionage tale (after Gabriel’s Moon). A professional travel writer with no training in spycraft, Dax works for MI6 unofficially, under the auspices of his sometime-girlfriend, agent Faith Green. Though he’d prefer to withdraw to his cottage in East Sussex and continue working on his new book about the great rivers of the world, Dax is sent to Guatemala in March 1963 to check on the political rise of a labor leader trying to unseat the country’s CIA-backed military government. Things quickly get hairy: Dax is threatened, then stabbed, by thugs who oppose his sniffing around. He recovers in England before Faith sends him to Berlin to check out reports that assassins may be targeting President John F. Kennedy during a weeklong visit. Dax bumbles his way through that mission, helping thwart disaster via a string of accidentally heroic acts inspired by his instincts as a writer. Readers will be charmed by Dax’s tendency to fail upward, and Boyd smoothly incorporates real history into his wildly entertaining plot. This is a treat. Agent: Grainne Fox, UTA. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 08/29/2025 | Details & Permalink

Bennett (A Death in Diamonds) offers Anglophiles another exciting royal adventure as Queen Elizabeth II and her secretary Joan McGraw investigate a murder that morphs into something extra sinister. In 1961, Buckingham Palace is gearing up for a visit from President Kennedy, the Cold War simmers in the background, and Queen Elizabeth, Prince Philip, and their staff are preparing for a trip to Italy. They plan to take the royal train on an overnight journey to the royal yacht, and Princess Margaret has invited her haughty friend Sandra Pole along as her temporary lady-in-waiting. As the train rattles through the darkening evening, Sandra claims she sees through her window a dead man being tossed into a lake, leading Joan to put her sleuthing cap back on. She and the Queen—who quietly offers astute suggestions while a revolver-wielding Joan does most of the legwork—soon learn they have a connection to the deceased, and that his death is related to a vast political conspiracy. Folding traces of James Bond and George Smiley into a cozy mystery plot, Bennett strikes gold. It’s a fast and funny entertainment. Agent: Grainne Fox, UTA. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 08/29/2025 | Details & Permalink

South England plunges into nuclear panic in this unnerving doomsday thriller from Seddon (The Short Straw). When news breaks on a Friday afternoon that a nuclear missile will strike London within the hour, chaos erupts, and armed troops struggle to maintain order. Young advertising exec Carrie Spencer has already hit Waterloo Station, eager to unwind at home with her partner, Emma, and three-year-old daughter, when emergency alerts ping on her fellow passengers’ phones. Meanwhile, artist Frankie and her boyfriend Otis receive the same alerts at the Dartmoor cottage they’ve booked for a romantic getaway—only seconds after Frankie shares the news she’s pregnant. Finally, there’s the widowed Mrs. Dabb, who grows frantic in her isolated cottage as her teenage daughter fails to arrive home from school. While the minutes tick down, the story lines overlap, and a panicked public succumbs to its worst instincts, unleashing predators like the Devon Militia, who drive around Dartmoor snatching girls and young women at gunpoint. Seddon’s gift for cliffhangers takes the tension to unbearable heights, and the strong women characters who lead the action help paper over a plot convenience or two. It’s easy to wolf this down in a single sitting. Agent: Ariele Fredman, UTA. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 08/29/2025 | Details & Permalink

Holiday magic goes horribly wrong in Cordani’s delightfully eccentric follow-up to The Twelve Days of Murder. Merry Clarke steals her boss’s invitation to the reopening of Verity’s Emporium, a bespoke London toy store that’s home to elaborate displays and strange mechanical attractions. After Montagu Verity, the store’s Willy Wonka–esque proprietor, offers a warm welcome to Merry and a handful of other VIPs, the shoppers discover they’ve been drugged by their complimentary hot cocoa. They awake trapped in the multilevel, secret passage-filled building, their phones having been confiscated upon entry, and soon discover the dead body of the store’s head toymaker. From there, flashbacks tease out each character’s backstory and relationships to the Veritys, while tense conversations in the present slowly reveal their links to one another. Meanwhile, the store brims with clues and terrors, including a display depicting each guest’s brutal murder. Cordani’s plotting is devious and perfectly calibrated, revealing just enough to heighten dramatic irony while leaving plenty of room for shocking twists. This canny combination of whodunit and horror makes for a gleefully demented stocking stuffer. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 08/29/2025 | Details & Permalink